It’s no secret that I love apples. After all, that’s my gravatar image above. Last year I wrote a post called Musings On Apple Madness in which I talked about my lifelong love of apples, and the childhood memories they evoke.

So it was with great anticipation that the Culinary Enthusiast and I took Meredith and the Little Misses for their first apple picking experience just over a week ago. It was a sunny and crisp fall day, perfect for an hour or so in the orchard. Little Miss was delighted to be pulled around in the wagon. We had the pleasure of seeing her pick her first apples from the tree, and her pride as she dropped them into the bag (she didn’t quite grasp the concept of setting them down gently). And my, she sure loved eating a freshly picked and polished apple! She is still talking about the experience (“I picked!”). Her little sister also enjoyed the day from her vantage point in the stroller. She likes gnawing on an apple, but won’t be big enough to help with the picking for a year or two.

My daughter and I both hope that experiences like these will instil in the children a love for fresh, whole food, and an appreciation for where local food comes from and how it’s grown. This is also a wonderful way to build family traditions and memories, for the little ones and for us grown-ups. I know I’ll always treasure the memory of helping Little Miss pull her first apple from a tree, and walking hand in hand through the orchard with her.

Our apple picking excursion took us to Great Lakes Farms, outside Port Stanley on Lake Erie, where the CE and I go each year. This lovely and well-run farm was affected by the widespread weather conditions, including a devastating frost in April, that dramatically reduced orchard yields across a large part of North America. However, they do have apples of many varieties and almost all their crop of Galas. We still had a wonderful time, and I have to say the sobering knowledge of the reduced crop gave me a special appreciation for each and every apple we harvested.

After we were done picking our McIntosh and Honey Crisp bounty, we went to their bakery/cafe where the CE savoured a slice of their mile high apple pie, and Little Miss and I shared a delicious apple cookie. My daughter had a bowl of improbably neon-coloured ice cream (!); not exactly in keeping with the theme of the day, but she enjoyed it.

In the weeks to come, I’ll be featuring a number of apple recipes on the blog. I’d never had an apple cookie before, and it was so good that I was inspired to research recipes. The one I am featuring today is quite different from what I had at the farm, so I hope to find a recipe that’s closer to it. But don’t get me wrong, this one is delicious too! It’s a tender, cakey kind of cookie, with a wonderful spicy aroma, the sweet goodness of chopped apple and rich pecans. It tastes like fall in a cookie!